Saturday, February 25, 2006

Using adverbs to help write information about a subject

Adverbs and adverbial phrases can be used with 'prompter questions' to quickly create a list of information about a particular subject. Say, for example, my subject is 'Live8'. My prompter question is in the format:

What's done...(adverb)?

Using the techniques from the Listing Adverbs and Adverbial phrases post I list the following adverbs/phrases:

in the air, with eggs, secretly.

My first question thus reads:

At Live8, what's done in the air?

Possible answers: the airship/helicopters filming the event. Throwing something into the crowd. Waving hands in air.

My second question reads:

At Live8, what's done with eggs?

Possible answers: feeding the performers and stage staff. Throwing eggs at bad acts (!)

And the third thus:

What's done secretly?

Possible answers: smuggling in surprise guests, counting the money collected on the day, big stars leaving the arena.

Cyclical approach

I can use the information listed to list more adverbs. The question "What's done secretly?" led to the answer "big stars leaving the arena". I can now consider adverbs (or adverbial phrases) that fit the action of big stars leaving the arena. For example:

Big stars leaving the arena is done: in a limo, at the end, with bodyguards etc.

I can pick one of these adverbs ('at the end') to form another prompter question:

At Live8, what's done at the end?

Possible answers: the grand finale, the goodbye, crowd dispersion, the big clean up, a final collection at the exits etc.

Ideas


I've found that using this approach can trigger ideas with very little creative effort:

Listing 'throwing eggs at bad acts' led to the idea of doing a comedic Live8 with bad acts such as those who failed in X Factor shows, or groups that released awful records.

Asking 'What's done with regret?' resulted in the answer 'Stars of the 1985 Live Aid watching the show at home sorry about not being included'. This led to the idea of a Live8 that would feature the acts of 1985 who didn't feature at 2005.

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